Autumn

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

It's still early for squirrel hunting but I have the itch. As a teen I loved to rise before the light of day and sneak into the deep oaks and ease near the creek bottom. I'd find an old oak and snuggle my back to a hollow of its roots and wait, content.

Within a half hour the routine of the deep woods returned. I'd sit and take in the deep musty odor of acorn mast and pine sap, the song of birds, and the whisper of the gentle Autumn wind. Always they came, the squirrels. Wild tasty bundles to be returned to a bed of my mother's gravy and biscuits.

But, times have changed. Now I hunt from my garage.

My home is covered by trees; live oaks, hickory and two very large pines. Of course my neighbors have trees too. This is important, because they supply the squirrels. Love my neighbors.

It all began by accident. One late Fall afternoon I was sitting in my garage taking a break from some silly labor, enjoying a cigar when movement in my neighbor's tree caught my attention. This tree is large, huge, its limbs if cut and planted would make a fine tree too. Six or seven grays were fighting. They ran this way and that and I said to myself, "Self, get your rifle."

My squirrel rifle is a Marlin model 39 Golden, a .22. Its deadly accurate. (I can hear the screams of the liberals and girly boys, oh my God, he's shooting from his garage in the city) deal with it. Anyway, I walked to my reloading bench and grabbed a box of .22 short CB caps. I settled back in my chair and waited.

I am careful, I limit my shots to certain zones of the tree. I keep in mind the background and hold my shots to a thirty foot section of the trunk of the oak. Oak is hard. CB Caps are weak. At sixty feet they will cleanly kill a squirrel and I seldom if ever take a shot at that range. Usually the kill zone is twenty feet. I hang the tails. I suppose one could say Ragnar Benson has colored my life with his writings. I'm a bad boy...

My Marlin's magazine tube will hold twenty five to thirty rounds of the little .22 CB's. I seldom need that many to fill a my needs. In an afternoon or morning of 'hunting' I can take five or six squirrels. Keep in mind these are city squirrels, these critters wear clogs and drink bird bath water; wussies.

You ask, aren't you afraid of the rifle's report....no, for the first few days of my fun, Sweet Wife had no idea I'd been shooting local squirrels from my garage. Our garage is adjacent to our home's family room; one thin wall, and she didn't hear a single pop. The sound is almost completely contained within the garage. I shoot and wait. I allow the citified victim to rest under the tree while I wait for their friends to join them. When I've taken as many shots as I feel has sufficiently thinned the herd, I then gather and clean my harvest. Nothing is wasted.

After cleaning, throw these little beauties in a pan of bacon fat and fry. Take them out and make gravy, return the squirrels and simmer. Serve over rice or pasta. Then, run out and slap 'ya mamma for feeding you so poorly all your life.

Try it, but don't tell them it was me that got you into trouble. Hey, obey the game laws of your state, and wait until Fall, after all, we'd civilized.

When you get your first kill, take it and have a nice mount made for the wife. She'll love you for it.

I have a problem. As I'm a analog guy living in a digital world, I have a little problem way over my head. Last evening when it was time for me to enter my receipts into my QuickBooks program a box appeared.

(quote)
QuickBooks has a problem in reading this registration file. You need to ask your system administrator to REMOVE this file and re-install QuickBooks.

c:\Programdata\common files\Intuit\QuickBooks\qbregistration.dat

(end quote)

Problem is I cannot find this file. Even if I did I hate to think of the results if I attempted file removal. What worries me is the thought of losing six months to a year of my financial records. This sucks.